By:
Aaron Klein
NEW YORK – U.N. Ambassador
Samantha Power is a driving force urging President Obama to strike in Syria,
according to informed Middle Eastern diplomats.
Power was notably absent
during an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting last month concerning Syria’s
alleged use of chemical weapons.
Her name barely pops up in
news media coverage of the crisis in
Power’s most visible reaction
to events in
Yet behind the scenes, Power
is a central player at pushing Obama to launch a military campaign in
The diplomats said Power has
been working with Syrian foes
The diplomats say that last
week, Power recommended Obama strike in
Power’s central involvement
may be telling.
As WND has reported, Power
served on the advisory board that created the “Responsibility to Protect,” or
R2P doctrine that would be used to justify any
The U.S.-NATO bombings in
The doctrine, now backed by
the United Nations, is based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but
a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,”
“genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
The term “war crimes” has, at
times, been used indiscriminately by various U.N.-backed international bodies,
including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which has applied it to
Israeli anti-terror operations in
Billionaire George Soros’
Open Society is one of only three non-governmental funders of the Global Centre
for the Responsibility to Protect, the main body behind promoting the doctrine.
Government sponsors include
The R2P center’s patrons
include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Irish President Mary
Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu.
Robinson and Tutu have made
solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled
Annan once famously stated:
“State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by
the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are …
instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa.”
Samantha Power,
Arafat deputy
The
The 2001 panel was named the
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the
term “Responsibility to Protect” and defined its guidelines.
Also on the advisory board of
the commission that founded R2P was Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as
well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a virulent denier of the Holocaust
who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization
chairman Yasser Arafat.
Soros himself outlined the
fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy journal
article titled, “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can
Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”
In the article, Soros wrote:
“True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their
governments.”
Soros said that if
governments “abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no
opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified.”
“By specifying that
sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate
nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens,” he wrote.
“In particular, the principle
of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles
to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global
collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”
Soros activists,
global rebalancing
The co-founder of the R2P
doctrine is Ramesh Thakur, an activist who recently advocated for a “global
rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “
In a piece in the March 2010
issue of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Thakur wrote: “Toward a new world order,
Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”
He was referring to a
U.N.-brokered international climate treaty about which he argued, “Developing
countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”
In the opinion piece, Thakur
also discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has
impacted the U.S.
“The West’s bullying approach
to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to
Thakur continued: “Westerners
have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the
world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making
significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”
He contended the
“demonstration of the limits to
Thakur invented R2P along
with Gareth Evans, president emeritus of the International Crisis Group, a
Soros-funded “crises management” firm where Soros himself sits on the small
board. ICG is one of the main proponents of the international R2P doctrine.
The International Crisis
Group is particularly relevant, because along with Soros on the board sits
former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who was appointed as the lead investigator
into the Sept. 11, 2012,
“Responsibility” founders
Evans and Thakur served as co-chairmen on the advisory board of the
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented
the term “responsibility to protect.”
In his capacity as
co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental
shift from sovereignty as a right to “sovereignty as responsibility.”
Evans officially presented
Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, U.N. General Assembly, which was
convened to consider the principle.
Source:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/this-war-hawk-pushing-obama-to-bomb-syria/